Appearance and Reality/Chapter XXV
CHAPTER XXV.
GOODNESS.
In a former chapter I tried to show, briefly, that the existence of evil affords no good ground for an objection against our Absolute. Evil and good are not illusions, but they are most certainly appearances. They are one-sided aspects, each over-ruled and transmuted in the Whole. And, after the discussions of our last chapter, we should be better able to appreciate their position and value. As with truth and error, so with good and bad, the opposition is not absolute. For, to some extent and in some manner, perfection is everywhere realized. And yet, upon the other hand, the distinction of degrees is no less vital. The interval which exists between, and which separates, the lower and the higher, is measured by the idea of perfect Reality. The lower is that which, to be made complete, would have to undergo a more total transformation of its nature. And viewed from the ground of what is higher—of what they fail to reach or even oppose—the lower truth and lower goodness become sheer error and evil. The Absolute is perfect in all its detail, it is equally true and good throughout. But, upon the other side, each distinction of better and more true, every degree and each comparative stage of reality is essential. They are made and justified by the all-pervasive action of one immanent perfection.
And guided by this two-fold principle we might approach without misgiving the diverse worlds of appearance. But in this work I am endeavouring merely to defend a general view. And so, both on the whole and here in particular with regard to goodness, I cannot attempt to deal fully with any aspect of the Absolute. It is mainly the common prejudice in favour of the ultimate truth of morality or religion, that has led me to give to them here a space which perhaps is undue. But, even with this, I can but touch on certain features of the subject; and I must deal chiefly with those which are likely to be urged as objections to our doctrine.[1]
We may speak of the good, generally, as that which satisfies desire. It is that which we approve of, and in which we can rest with a feeling of contentment. Or we may describe it again, if we please, as being the same as worth. It contains those elements which, also, we find in truth. Truth and goodness are each the correspondence, or rather each the identity, of idea and existence. In truth we start with existence, as being the appearance of perfection, and we go on to complete ideally what really must be there. In goodness, on the other hand, we begin with an idea of what is perfect, and we then make, or else find, this same idea in what exists. And the idea also I take to be desired. Goodness is the verification in existence of a desired ideal content, and it thus implies the measurement of fact by a suggested idea. Hence both goodness and truth contain the separation of idea and existence, and involve a process in time. And, therefore, each is appearance, and but a one-sided aspect of the Real.[2]
But the good (it may be objected) need involve no idea. Is not the pleasant, as such, good? Is not at any rate any feeling in which we rest with satisfaction, at once good in itself? I answer these questions in the negative. Good, in the proper sense, implies the fulfilment of desire; at least, if you consider anything apart from the realization of a suggested idea, it is at a stage below goodness. Such an experience would be, but it would not, properly, have yet become either good or true. And on reflection, perhaps, we should not wish to make use of these terms. For, at our level of mental life, whatever satisfies and contents us can hardly fail to have some implication with desire. And, if we take it where as yet it suggests nothing, where we have no idea of what we feel, and where we do not realize, however dimly, that “it is this which is good”—then it is no paradox to refuse to such a stage the name of goodness. Such a feeling would become good, if for a moment I were so to regard it; for I then should possess the idea of what satisfies, and should find that idea given also in fact. But, where ideas are absent, we should not speak of anything as being actually good or true. Goodness and truth may be there potentially, but as yet neither of them is there.
And that an idea is required for goodness seems fairly clear, but with regard to desire there is more room for doubt. I may approve, in the sense of finding a pleasant idea realized, and yet, in some cases, desire appears to be absent. For, in some cases, existence does not oppose my idea, and there is, hence, no place open for the tension of desire. This assertion might be combated, but, for myself, I am prepared to admit it. And the inclusion of desire in the idea of good, to this extent I allow, may be called arbitrary. But it seems justifiable, because (as things are) desire must be developed. Approval without desire is but an extreme and a passing condition. There cannot fail to come a wavering, and so an opposition, in my state; and with this at once we have the tension required for desire. Desire, I thus admit, may, for the moment, be absent from approval; but, because it necessarily must ensue, I take it as essential. Still this point, in my opinion, has little importance. What is important is to insist that the presence of an idea is essential to goodness.
And for this reason we must not admit that the pleasant, as such, is good. The good is pleasant, and the better, also, is in proportion more pleasant. And we may add, again, that the pleasant is generally good, if we will leave out “as such.” For the pleasant will naturally become desired, and will therefore on the whole be good. But we must not assert that everything pleasant is the satisfaction of a desire, or even always must imply desire or approval. And hence, since an idea may be absent, the pleasant sometimes may be not properly good.
And against the identification of bare pleasure, as such, with the good we may unhesitatingly pronounce. Such a view separates the aspect of pleasure, and then denies that anything else in the world is worth anything at all. If it merely asserted that the more pleasant and the better were one, its position would be altered. For, since pleasure goes with everything that is free from discord, or has merged discord in fuller harmony, naturally the higher degree of individuality will be therefore more pleasant.[3] And we have included pleasure as an essential element in our idea of perfection (Chapter xx.). But it will hardly follow from this that nothing in the universe except pleasure is good, and that, taking this one aspect as the end, we may regard all else as mere means. Where everything is connected in one whole, you may abstract and so may isolate any one factor. And you may prove at your ease that, without this, all the rest are imperfect and worthless; and you may show how, this one being added, they all once more gain reality and worth. And hence of every one alike you may conclude that it is the end for the sake of which all the others exist. But from this to argue, absolutely and blindly, that some one single aspect of the world is the sole thing that is good, is most surely illogical. It is to narrow a point of view, which is permissible only so long as it is general, into a one-sided mistake. And thus, in its denial that anything else beside pleasure is good, Hedonism must be met by a decided rejection.
Is a thing desired always, because it is first pleasant, or is it ever pleasant rather, on the other hand, because we desire it?[4] And we may ask the same question as to the relation of the desired to the good. But, again, is anything true because I am led to think it, or am I rather led to think it because of its truth? And, once more, is it right because I ought, or does the “because” only hold in the opposite direction? And is an object beautiful because it affects me, or is, on the other hand, my emotion the result of its beauty? In each of these cases we first have made a separation which is too rigid, and on this foundation are built questions which threaten us with a dilemma. We set down upon each side, as a fact and as presupposed, what apart from the other side, at least sometimes, would have no existence. If good is the satisfaction of desire, you may take desire as being its condition; but, on the other hand, you would desire hardly anything at all, unless in some sense it had given satisfaction already. Certainly the pleasant, as we have seen, may, for a time and at a low level, be not approved of or desired. But it is another thing to assert that goodness consists in, or is a mere result from, pleasure.
That which consistent Hedonism would, at least by implication, deny, is the direction of desire in the end towards anything but pleasure. Something is pleasant as a fact, and solely for that cause it is desired; and with this the whole question seems forthwith settled. But pleasure itself, like every other fact, cannot be something which just happens. Upon its side also, assuredly, it is not without a reason. And, when we ask, we find that pleasure co-exists always with what we call perfection or individuality. But, if so, then surely the “because” holds as firmly in one way as in the other. And, so far as I see, if we have a right to deny that a certain character is necessary for pleasure, we should have the same right to repudiate the connection between pleasure and desire. If the one co-existence is mere accident and a conjunction which happens, then why not also, and as much, the other? But, if we agree that the connection is two-sided, and that a degree of relative perfection is essential to pleasure, just as pleasure, on its side, is an element in perfection, then Hedonism, at once, is in principle refuted. The object of desire will never fail, as such, to contain more than pleasure; and the idea that either pleasure, or any other aspect, is the single End in the universe must be allowed to be untenable (Chapter xxvi.). I may perhaps put this otherwise by urging that, even if Hedonism were true, there would be no possible way in which its truth could be shown.[5]
Passing from this mistake I will notice another doctrine from which we must dissent. There is a temptation to identify goodness with the realization of the Will; and, on the strength of a certain assumption, this conclusion would, taken broadly, be right. But we shall see that this assumption is not tenable (Chapter xxvi.), and, without it, the conclusion cannot stand. We have noticed that the satisfaction of desire can be found as well as made by the individual. And where experienced existence is both pleasant and satisfies desire, I am unable to see how we can refuse to call it good. Nor, again, can pleasure be limited so as to be the feeling of the satisfied will, since it clearly seems to exist in the absence of volition.[6]
I may perhaps express our general view by saying that the good is co-extensive with approbation. But I should add that approbation is to be taken in its widest sense. To approve is to have an idea in which we feel satisfaction, and to have or imagine the presence of this idea in existence. And against the existence which, actually or in imagination, fails to realize the idea, the idea becomes an “is to be,” a “should” or an “ought.” Nor is approbation in the least confined to the realm of morality proper, but is found just as much in the worlds of speculation or art. Wherever a result, external or inward, is measured by an idea which is pleasant, and is seen to correspond, we can, in a certain sense, be said to approve. And, where we approve, there certainly we can be said also to find the result good.[7]
The good, in general, is often identified with the desirable. This, I think, is misleading. For the desirable means that which is to be, or ought to be, desired. And it seems, hence, to imply that the good might be good, and yet not be desired, or, again, that something might be desired which is not good. And, if good is taken generally, these assertions at least are disputable. The term “desirable” belongs to the world of relative goods, and has a clear meaning only where we can speak of better and worse. But to good in general it seems not strictly applicable. A thing is desirable, when to desire it is better. It is not desirable, properly, when you can say no more than that to desire it is good.[8]
The good might be called desirable in the sense that it essentially has to be desired. For desire is not an external means, but is contained and involved in goodness, or at least follows from it necessarily. Goodness without desire, we might say, would not be itself, and it is hence desirable (p. 404). This use of “desirable” would call attention to an important point, but, for the reason given above, would be misleading. At any rate it clearly separates for the moment desire from goodness.
We have attempted now to fix generally the meaning of goodness, and we may proceed from this to lay stress on its contradictory character. The good is not the perfect, but is merely a one-sided aspect of perfection. It tends to pass beyond itself, and, if it were completed, it would forthwith cease properly to be good. I will exhibit its incompleteness first by asking what it is that is good, and will then go on briefly to point out the self-contradiction in its essence. If we seek to know what is goodness, we find it always as the adjective of something not itself. Beauty, truth, pleasure, and sensation are all things that are good. We desire them all, and all can serve as types or “norms” by which to guide our approbation. And hence, in a sense, they all will fall under and be included in goodness. But when we ask, on the other hand, if goodness exhausts all that lies in these regions, the answer must be different. For we see at once that each possesses a character of its own; and, in order to be good, the other aspects of the universe must also be themselves. The good then, as such, is obviously not so wide as the totality of things. And the same conclusion is at once forced on us, if we go on to examine the essence of goodness. For that is self-discrepant, and is therefore appearance and not Reality. The good implies a distinction of idea from existence, and a division which, in the lapse of time, is perpetually healed up and re-made.
And such a process is involved in the inmost being of the good. A satisfied desire is, in short, inconsistent with itself. For, so far as it is quite satisfied, it is not a desire; and, so far as it is a desire, it must remain at least partly unsatisfied. And where we are said to want nothing but what we have, and where approbation precludes desire, we have, first, an ideal continuance of character in conflict with change. But in any case, apart from this, there is implied the suggestion of an idea, distinct from the fact while identified with it. Each of these features is necessary, and each is inconsistent with the other. And the resolution of this difference between idea and existence is both demanded by the good, and yet remains unattainable. Its accomplishment, indeed, would destroy the proper essence of goodness, and the good is therefore in itself incomplete and self-transcendent. It moves towards an other and a higher character, in which, becoming perfect, it would be merged.
Hence obviously the good is not the Whole, and the Whole, as such, is not good. And, viewed thus in relation to the Absolute, there is nothing either bad or good, there is not anything better or worse. For the Absolute is not its appearances. But (as we have seen throughout) such a truth is itself partial and false, since the Absolute appears in its phenomena and is real nowhere outside them. We indeed can only deny that it is any one, because it is all of them in unity. And so, regarded from this other side, the Absolute is good, and it manifests itself throughout in various degrees of goodness and badness. The destiny of goodness, in reaching which it must itself cease to be, is accomplished by the Whole. And, since in that consummation idea and existence are not lost but are brought into harmony, the Whole therefore is still good. And again, since reference to the perfect makes finite satisfactions all higher and lower, the Absolute is realized in all of them to different degrees. I will briefly deal with this latter point.
We saw, in our last chapter, the genuine meaning of degrees in reality and truth. That is more perfect which is separated from perfection by a smaller interval. And the interval is measured by the amount of re-arrangement and of addition required in order to turn an appearance into Reality. We found, again, that our one principle has a double aspect, as it meets two opposite defects in phenomena. For an element is lower as being either more narrow or less harmonious. And we perceived, further, how and why these two defects are essentially connected. Passing now to goodness, we must content ourselves by observing in general that the same principle holds. The satisfaction which is more true and more real, is better. And we measure, here again, by the double aspect of extension and harmony.[9] Only the perfect and complete would, in the end, content our desires. And a satisfaction more consistent with itself, or again wider and fuller, approaches more nearly to that consummation in which we could rest. Further the divergence of these two aspects is itself but apparent, and consists merely in a one-sided confinement of our view. For a satisfaction determined from the outside cannot internally be harmonious, while on the other hand, if it became all-inclusive, it would have become also concordant. In its application this single principle tends naturally to fall apart into two different standards. Still, for all that, it remains in essence and at bottom the same, and it is everywhere an estimation by the Absolute.
In a sense, therefore, the Absolute is actually good, and throughout the world of goodness it is truly realized in different degrees of satisfaction. Since in ultimate Reality all existence, and all thought and feeling, become one, we may even say that every feature in the universe is thus absolutely good.
I have now briefly laid down the general meaning and significance of goodness, and may go on to consider it in a more special and restricted sense. The good, we have seen, contains the sides of existence and idea. And the existence, so far, has been found to be in accordance with the idea, but the idea itself, so far, has not necessarily produced or realized itself in the fact. When, however, we take goodness in its narrower meaning, this last feature is essential. The good, in short, will become the realized end or completed will. It is now an idea which not only has an answering content in fact, but, in addition also, has made, and has brought about, that correspondence. We may say that the idea has translated or has carried itself out into reality; for the content on both sides is the same, and the existence has become what it is through the action of the idea. Goodness thus will be confined to the realm of ends or of self-realization. It will be restricted, in other words, to what is commonly called the sphere of morality.
For we must here take self-realization to have no meaning except in finite souls; and of course every soul is finite, though certainly not all are human. Will, implying a process in time, cannot belong, as such, to the Absolute; and, on the other side, we cannot assume the existence of ends in the physical world. I shall return in the next chapter to this question of teleology in Nature, but, for the sake of convenience, we must here exclude it from our view. There is to be, in short, no self-realization except that of souls.
Goodness then, at present, is the realization of its idea by a finite soul. It is not perfection simply, but perfection as carried out by a will. We must forget, on the one hand, that, as we have seen, approbation goes beyond morality; and we must, as yet, be blind to that more restricted sense in which morality is inward. Goodness is, here, to be the carrying out by the individual of his idea of perfection. And we must go on to show briefly how, in this sense also, the good is inconsistent. It is a point of view which is compelled perpetually to pass beyond itself.
If we enquire, once more, “What is good?” in the sense of asking for some element of content which is special, we must answer, as before, “There is nothing.” Pleasure, we have seen, is by itself not the essence of goodness; and, on the other hand, no feature of the world falls outside of what is good. Beauty, truth, feeling, and sensation, every imaginable matter must go to constitute perfection. For perfection or individuality is a system, harmonious and thus inclusive of everything. And goodness we have now taken to be the willed reality of its perfection by a soul. And hence neither the form of system by itself, nor again, any one matter apart from the whole, is either perfect or good.[10]
But, as with truth and reality, so with goodness our one standard becomes double, and individuality falls apart into the aspects of harmony and extent. In principle, and actually in the end, these two features must coincide (Chapter xxiv.); but in judging of phenomena we are constantly forced to apply them separately. I propose to say nothing about the various concrete modes in which this two-fold perfection has been realized in fact. But, solely with a view to bring out the radical vice of all goodness, I will proceed to lay stress on this divergence in application. The aspects of extent and of harmony come together in the end, but no less certainly in that end goodness, as such, will have perished.
I am about, in other words, to invite attention to what is called self-sacrifice. Goodness is the realization by an individual of his own perfection, and that perfection consists, as we have seen, in both harmony and extent. And provisionally these two features will not quite coincide. To reduce the raw material of one’s nature to the highest degree of system, and to use every element from whatever source as a subordinate means to this object, is certainly one genuine view of goodness. On the other hand to widen as far as possible the end to be pursued, and to realize this through the distraction or the dissipation of one’s own individuality, is certainly also good. An individual system, aimed at in one’s self, and again the subordination of one’s own development to a wide-embracing end, are each an aspect of the moral principle. So far as they are discrepant, these two pursuits may be called, the one, self-assertion, and the other, self-sacrifice. And, however much these must diverge, each is morally good; and, taken in the abstract, you cannot say that one is better than the other.
I am far from suggesting that in morality we are forced throughout to make a choice between such incompatible ideals. For this is not the case, and, if it were so, life could hardly be lived. To a very large extent by taking no thought about his individual perfection, and by aiming at that which seems to promise no personal advantage, a man secures his private welfare. We may, perhaps, even say that in the main there is no collision between self-sacrifice and self-assertion, and that on the whole neither of these, in the proper sense, exists for morality. But, while admitting or asserting to the full the general identity of these aspects, I am here insisting on the fact of their partial divergence. And that, at least in some respects and with some persons, these two ideals seem hostile no sane observer can deny.
In other words we must admit that two great divergent forms of moral goodness exist. In order to realize the idea of a perfect self a man may have to choose between two partially conflicting methods. Morality, in short, may dictate either self-sacrifice or self-assertion, and it is important to clear our ideas as to the meaning of each. A common mistake is to identify the first with the living for others, and the second with living for oneself. Virtue upon this view is social, either directly or indirectly, either visibly or invisibly. The development of the individual, that is, unless it reacts to increase the welfare of society, can certainly not be moral. This doctrine I am still forced to consider as a truth which has been exaggerated and perverted into error.[11] There are intellectual and other accomplishments, to which I at least cannot refuse the title of virtue. But I cannot assume that, without exception, these must all somehow add to what is called social welfare; nor, again, do I see how to make a social organism the subject which directly possesses them. But, if so, it is impossible for me to admit that all virtue is essentially or primarily social. On the contrary, the neglect of social good, for the sake of pursuing other ends, may not only be moral self-assertion, but again, equally under other conditions, it may be moral self-sacrifice. We can even say that the living “for others,” rather than living “for myself,” may be immoral and selfish.
And you can hardly make the difference between self-sacrifice and self-assertion consist in this, that the idea pursued, in one case, falls beyond the individual and, in the other case, fails to do so. Or, rather, such a phrase, left undefined, can scarcely be said to have a meaning. Every permanent end of every kind will go beyond the individual, if the individual is taken in his lowest sense. And, passing that by, obviously the content realized in an individual’s perfection must be also above him and beyond him. His perfection is not one thing apart from the rest of the universe, and he gains it only by appropriating, and by reducing to a special harmony, the common substance of all. It is obvious that his private welfare, so far as he is social, must include to some extent the welfare of others. And his intellectual, aesthetic, and moral development, in short the whole ideal side of his nature, is clearly built up out of elements which he shares with other souls. Hence the individual’s end in self-advancement must always transcend his private being. In fact, the difference between self-assertion and self-sacrifice does not lie in the contents which are used, but in the diverse uses which are made of them; and I will attempt to explain this. In moral self-assertion the materials used may be drawn from any source, and they may belong to any world. They may, and they must, largely realize ends which visibly transcend my life. But it is self-assertion when, in applying these elements, I am guided by the idea of the greatest system in myself. If the standard used in measuring and selecting my material is, in other words, the development of my individual perfection, then my conduct is palpably not self-sacrifice, and may be opposed to it. It is self-sacrifice when I pursue an end by which my individuality suffers loss. In the attainment of this object my self is distracted, or is diminished, or even dissipated. I may, for social purposes, give up my welfare for the sake of other persons; or again I may devote myself to some impersonal pursuit, by which the health and harmony of my self is injured. Wherever the moral end followed is followed to the loss of individual well-being, then that is self-sacrifice, whether I am living “for others” or not.[12] But self-sacrifice is also, and on the other hand, a form of self-realization. The wider end, which is aimed at, is, visibly or invisibly, reached; and in that pursuit and that attainment I find my personal good.
It is the essential nature of my self, as finite, equally to assert and, at the same time, to pass beyond itself; and hence the objects of self-sacrifice and of self-advancement are each equally mine. If we are willing to push a metaphor far beyond its true and natural limits, we may perhaps state the contrast thus. In self-assertion the organ considers first its own development, and for that purpose it draws material from the common life of all organs. But in self-sacrifice the organ aims at realizing some feature of the life larger than its own, and is ready to do this at the cost of injury to its own existence. It has foregone the idea of a perfection, individual, rounded, and concrete. It is willing to see itself abstract and mutilated, over-specialized, or stunted, or even destroyed. But this actual defect it can make up ideally, by an expansion beyond its special limits, and by an identification of its will with a wider reality. Certainly the two pursuits, thus described, must in the main coincide and be one. The whole is furthered most by the self-seeking of its parts, for in these alone the whole can appear and be real. And the part again is individually bettered by its action for the whole, since thus it gains the supply of that common substance which is necessary to fill it. But, on the other hand, this general coincidence is only general, and assuredly there are points at which it ceases. And here self-assertion and self-sacrifice begin to diverge, and each to acquire its distinctive character.
Each of these modes of action realizes the self, and realizes that which is higher; and (I must repeat this) they are equally virtuous and right. To what then should the individual have any duty, if he has none to himself? Or is it, again, really supposed that in his perfection the whole is not perfected, and that he is somewhere enjoying his own advantage and holding it apart from the universe? But we have seen that such a separation between the Absolute and finite beings is meaningless. Or shall we be assured, upon the other side, that for a thing to sacrifice itself is contrary to reason? But we have found that the very essence of finite beings is self-contradictory, that their own nature includes relation to others, and that they are already each outside of its own existence. And, if so, surely it would be impossible, and most contrary to reason, that the finite, realizing itself, should not also transcend its own limits. If a finite individual really is not self-discrepant, then let that be argued and shown. But, otherwise, that he should be compelled to follow two ideals of perfection which diverge, appears natural and necessary. And each of these pursuits, in general and in the abstract, is equally good. It is only the particular conditions which in each case can decide between them.
Now that this divergence ceases, and is brought together in the end, is most certain. For nothing is outside the Absolute, and in the Absolute there is nothing imperfect. And an un-accomplished object, implying discrepancy between idea and existence, is most surely imperfection. In the Absolute everything finite attains the perfection which it seeks; but, upon the other hand, it cannot gain perfection precisely as it seeks it. For, as we have seen throughout, the finite is more or less transmuted, and, as such, disappears in being accomplished. This common destiny is assuredly the end of the Good. The ends sought by self-assertion and self-sacrifice are, each alike, unattainable. The individual never can in himself become an harmonious system. And in the wider ideal to which he devotes himself, no matter how thoroughly, he never can find complete self-realization. For, even if we take that ideal to be perfect and to be somehow completely fulfilled, yet, after all, he himself is not totally absorbed in it. If his discordant element is for faith swallowed up, yet faith, no less, means that a jarring appearance remains. And, in the complete gift and dissipation of his personality, he, as such, must vanish; and, with that, the good is, as such, transcended and submerged. This result is but the conclusion with which our chapter began. Goodness is an appearance, it is phenomenal, and therefore self-contradictory. And therefore, as was the case with degrees of truth and reality, it shows two forms of one standard which will not wholly coincide. In the end, where every discord is brought to harmony, every idea is also realized. But there, where nothing can be lost, everything, by addition and by re-arrangement, more or less changes its character. And most emphatically no self-assertion nor any self-sacrifice, nor any goodness or morality, has, as such, any reality in the Absolute. Goodness is a subordinate and, therefore, a self-contradictory aspect of the universe.
And, with this, it is full time that we went forward; but, for the sake of some readers, I will dwell longer on the relative character of the Good. Too many English moralists assume blindly that goodness is ultimate and absolute. For as regards metaphysics they are incompetent, and that in the religion which probably they profess or at least esteem, morality, as such, is subordinate—such a fact suggests to them nothing. They are ignorant of the view for which all things finite in different degrees are real and true, and for which, at the same time, not one of them is ultimate. And they cannot understand that the Whole may be consistent, when the appearances which qualify it conflict with one another. For holding on to each separate appearance, as a thing absolute and not relative, they fix these each in that partial character which is unreal and untrue. And such one-sided abstractions, which in coming together are essentially transformed, they consider to be ultimate and fundamental facts. Thus in goodness the ends of self-assertion and of self-sacrifice are inconsistent, each with itself and each with the other. They are fragmentary truths, neither of which is, as such, ultimately true. But it is just these relative aspects which the popular moralist holds to, each as real by itself; and hence ensues a blind tangle of bewilderment and error. To follow this in detail is not my task, and still less my desire, but it may be instructive, perhaps, briefly to consider it further.
There is first one point which should be obvious, but which seems often forgotten. In asking whether goodness can, in the end, be self-consistent and be real, we are not concerned merely with the relation between virtue and selfishness. For suppose that there is no difference between these two, except merely for our blindness, yet, possessing this first crown of our wishes, we have still not solved the main problem. It will certainly now be worth my while to seek the good of my neighbour, since by no other course can I do any better for myself, and since what is called self-sacrifice, or benevolent action, is in fact the only possible way to secure my advantage. But then, upon the other hand, a mere balance of advantage, however satisfactory the means by which I come to possess it, is most assuredly not the fulfilment of my desire. For the desire of human beings (this is surely a commonplace) has no limit. Goodness, in other words, must imply an attempt to reach perfection, and it is the nature of the finite to seek for that which nothing finite can satisfy. But, if so, with a mere balance of advantage I have not realized my good. And, however much virtue may be nothing in the world but a refined form of self-seeking, yet, with this, virtue is not one whit the less a pursuit of what is inconsistent and therefore impossible. And goodness, or the attainment of such an impossible end, is still self-contradictory.
Further, since it seems necessary for me not to be ashamed of platitude, let me call the attention of the reader to some evident truths. No existing social organism secures to its individuals any more than an imperfect good, and in all of them self-sacrifice marks the fact of a failure in principle. But even in an imaginary society, such as is foretold to us in the New Jerusalem of Mr. Spencer, it is only for thoughtless credulity that evil has vanished. For it is not easy to forget that finite beings are physically subject to accident, or easy to believe that this their natural essence is somehow to be removed. And, even so and in any case, the members of an organism must of necessity be sacrificed more or less to the whole. For they must more or less be made special in their function, and that means rendered, to some extent, one-sided and narrow. And, if so, the harmony of their individual being must inevitably in some degree suffer. And it must suffer again, if the individual devotes himself to some aesthetic or intellectual pursuit. On the other side, even within the New Jerusalem, if a person aims merely at his own good, he, none the less, is fore-doomed to imperfection and failure. For on a defective and shifting natural basis he tries to build a harmonious system; and his task, hopeless for this reason, is for another reason more hopeless. He strives within finite limits to construct a concordant whole, when the materials which he is forced to use have no natural endings, but extend themselves indefinitely beyond himself into an endless world of relations. And, if so, once more we have been brought back to the familiar truth, that there is no such possibility as human perfection. But, if so, then goodness, since it must needs pursue the perfect, is in its essence self-discrepant, and in the end is unreal. It is an appearance one-sided and relative, and not an ultimate reality.
But to this idea of relativity, both in the case of goodness and every other order of phenomena, popular philosophy remains blind. Everything, for it, is either a delusion, and so nothing at all, or is on the other hand a fact, and, because it exists, therefore, as such, real. That reality can appear nowhere except in a system of relative unrealities; that, taken apart from this system, the several appearances are in contradiction with one another and each within itself; that, nevertheless, outside of this field of jarring elements there neither is nor can be anything; and that, if appearances were not irremediably self-discrepant, they could not possibly be the appearances of the Real—all this to popular thought remains meaningless. Common sense openly revolts against the idea of a fact which is not a reality; or again, as sober criticism, it plumes itself on suggesting cautious questions, doubts which dogmatically assume the truth of its coarsest prejudices. Nowhere are these infirmities illustrated better than by popular Ethics, in the attitude it takes towards the necessary discrepancies of goodness. That these discrepancies exist because goodness is not absolute, and that their solution is not possible until goodness is degraded to an appearance—such a view is blindly ignored. Nor is it asked if these opposites, self-assertion and self-sacrifice, are not each internally inconsistent and so irrational. But the procedure is, first, tacitly to assume that each opposite is fixed, and will not pass beyond itself. And then, from this basis, one of the extremes is rejected as an illusion; or else, both being absolute and solid, an attempt is made to combine them externally or to show that somehow they coincide. I will add a few words on these developments.
(i.) The good may be identified with self-sacrifice, and self-assertion may, therefore, be totally excluded. But the good, as self-sacrifice, is clearly in collision with itself. For an act of self-denial is, no less, in some sense a self-realization, and it inevitably includes an aspect of self-assertion. And hence the good, as the mere attainment of self-sacrifice, is really unmeaning. For it is in finite selves, after all, that the good must be realized. And, further, to say that perfection must be always the perfection of something else, appears quite inconsistent. For it will mean either that on the whole the good is nothing whatever, or else that it consists in that which each does or may enjoy, yet not as good, but as a something extraneously added unto him. The good, in other words, in this case will be not good; and in the former case it will be nothing positive, and therefore nothing. That each should pursue the general perfection, should act for the advantage of a whole in which his self is included, or should add to a collection in which he may share—is certainly not pure self-sacrifice. And a maxim that each should aim purely at his neighbour’s welfare in separation from his own, we have seen is self-inconsistent. It can hardly be ultimate or reasonable, when its meaning seems to end in nonsense.[13]
(ii.) Or, rejecting all self-transcendence as an idle word, popular Ethics may set up pure self-assertion as all that is good. It may perhaps desire to add that by the self-seeking of each the advantage of all is best secured, but this addition clearly is not contained in self-assertion, and cannot properly be included. For by such an addition, if it were necessary, the end at once would have been essentially modified. It was self-assertion pure, and not qualified, which was adopted as goodness; and it is this alone which we must now consider. And we perceive first (as we saw above) that such a good is unattainable, since perfection cannot be realized in a finite being. Not only is the physical basis too shifting, but the contents too essentially belong to a world outside the self; and hence it is impossible that they should be brought to completion and to harmony within it. One may indeed seek to approach nearer to the unattainable. Aiming at a system within oneself, one may forcibly abstract from the necessary connections of the material used. We may consider this and strive to apply it one-sidedly, and in but a single portion of its essential aspects. But the other aspect inseparably against our will is brought in, and it stamps our effort with inconsistency. Thus even to pursue imperfectly one’s own advantage by itself is unreasonable, for by itself and purely it has no existence at all. It was a trait characteristic of critical Common Sense when it sought for the individual’s moral end by first supposing him isolated. For a dogmatic assumption that the individual remains what he is when you have cut off his relations, is very much what the vulgar understand by criticism. But, when such a question is discussed, it must be answered quite otherwise. The contents, asserted in the individual’s self-seeking, necessarily extend beyond his private limits. A maxim, therefore, merely to pursue one’s own advantage is, taken strictly, inconsistent. And a principle which contradicts itself is, once more, not reasonable.[14]
(iii.) In the third place, admitting self-assertion and self-denial as equally good, popular thought attempts to bring them together from outside. Goodness will now consist in the coincidence of these independent goods. The two are not to be absorbed by and resolved into a third. Each, on the other hand, is to retain unaltered the character which it has, and the two, remaining two, are somehow to be conjoined. And this, as we have seen throughout our work, is quite impossible. If two conflicting finite elements are anywhere to be harmonized, the first condition is that each should forego and should transcend its private character. Each, in other words, working out the discrepancy already within itself, passes beyond itself and unites with its opposite in a product higher than either. But such a transcendence can have no meaning to popular Ethics. That has assumed without examination that each finite end, taken by itself, is reasonable; and it therefore demands that each, as such, should together be satisfied. And, blind to theory, it is blind also to the practical refutation of its dogmas by everyday life. There a man can seek the general welfare in his own, and can find his own end accomplished in the general; for goodness there already is the transcendence and solution of one-sided elements. The good is already there, not the external conjunction, but the substantial identity of these opposites. They are not coincident with, but each is in, and makes one aspect of, the other. In short, already within goodness that work is imperfectly begun, which, when completed, must take us beyond goodness altogether. But for popular Ethics, as we saw, not only goodness itself, but each of its one-sided features is fixed as absolute. And, these having been so fixed in irrational independence, an effort is made to find the good in their external conjunction.
Goodness is apparently now to be the coincidence of two ultimate goods, but it is hard to see how such an end can be ultimate or reasonable. That two elements should necessarily come together, and, at the same time, that neither should be qualified by this relation, or again that a relation in the end should not imply a whole, which subordinates and qualifies the two terms—all this in the end seems unintelligible. But, again, if the relation and the whole are to qualify the terms, one does not understand how either by itself could ever have been ultimate.[15] In short, the bare conjunction of independent reals is an idea which contradicts itself. But of this naturally Common Sense has no knowledge at all, and it therefore blindly proceeds with its impossible task.
That task is to defend the absolute character of goodness by showing that the discrepancies which it presents disappear in the end, and that these discrepant features, none the less, survive each in its own character. But by popular Ethics this task usually is not understood. It directs itself therefore to prove the coincidence of self-seeking and benevolence, or to show, in other words, that self-sacrifice, if moral, is impossible. And with this conclusion reached, in its opinion, the main problem would be solved. Now I will not ask how far in such a consummation its ultimate ends would, one or both, have been subordinated; for by its conclusion, in any case, the main problem is not touched. We have already seen that our desires, whether for ourselves or for others, do not stop short of perfection. But where each individual can say no more than this, that it has been made worth his while to regard others’ interests, perfection surely may be absent. And where the good aimed at is absent, to affirm that we have got rid of the puzzle offered by goodness seems really thoughtless. It is, however, a thoughtlessness which, as we have perceived, is characteristic; and let us pass to the external means employed to produce moral harmony.
Little need here be said. We may find, thrust forward or indicated feebly, a well-worn contrivance. This is of course the deus ex machina, an idea which no serious student of first principles is called on to consider. A God which has to make things what otherwise, and by their own nature, they are not, may summarily be dismissed as an exploded absurdity. And that perfection should exist in the finite, as such, we have seen to be even directly contrary to the nature of things. A supposition that it may be made worth my while to be benevolent—especially when an indefinite prolongation of my life is imagined—cannot, in itself and for our knowledge, be called impossible. But then, upon the other hand, we have remarked that such an imagined improvement is not a solution of the actual main problem. The belief may possibly add much to our comfort by assuring us that virtue is the best, and is the only true, selfishness. But such a truth, if true, would not imply that both or either of our genuine ends is, as such, realized. And, failing this, the wider discrepancy has certainly not been removed from goodness. We may say, in a word, that the deus ex machina refuses to work. Little can be brought in by this venerable artifice except a fresh source of additional collision and perplexity. And, giving up this embarrassing agency, popular Ethics may prefer to make an appeal to “Reason.” For, if its two moral ends are each reasonable, then, if somehow they do not coincide, the nature of things must be unreasonable. But we have shown, on the other hand, that neither end by itself is reasonable; and, if the nature of things were to bring together elements discordant within themselves and conflicting with one another, and were to attempt, without transforming their character, to make these coincide,—the nature of things would have revealed itself as an apotheosis of unreason or of popular Ethics. And, baffled by its failure to find its dogmas realized in the universe, this way of thinking at last may threaten us with total scepticism. But here, once more, it is but speaking of that of which it knows really nothing; for an honest scepticism is a thing outside its comprehension. An honest and truth-seeking scepticism pushes questions to the end, and knows that the end lies hid in that which is assumed at the beginning. But the scepticism (so-called) of Common Sense from first to last is dogmatic. It takes for granted, first, without examination that certain doctrines are true; it then demands that this collection of dogmas should come to an agreement; and, when its demand is rejected by the universe, it none the less persists in reiterating its old assumptions. And this dogmatism, simply because it is baffled and perplexed, gets the name of scepticism. But a sincere scepticism, attacking without fear each particular prejudice, finds that every finite view, when taken by itself, becomes inconsistent. And borne on this inconsistency, which in each case means a self-transcendence, such a scepticism is lifted to see a whole in which all finites blend and are resolved. But when each fact and end has foregone its claim, as such, to be ultimate or reasonable, then reason and harmony in the highest sense have begun to appear. And scepticism in the end survives as a mere aspect of constructive metaphysics. With this we may leave the irrational dogmas of popular Ethics.
The discussion of these has been wearisome, but perhaps not uninstructive. It should have confirmed us in our general conclusion as to the nature of the good. Goodness is not absolute or ultimate; it is but one side, one partial aspect, of the nature of things. And it manifests its relativity by inconsistency, by a self-contradiction in principle, and by a tendency shown towards separation in that principle’s working, an attempted division, which again is inconsistent and cannot rest in itself. Goodness, as such, is but appearance which is transcended in the Absolute. But, upon the other hand, since in that Absolute no appearance is lost, the good is a main and essential factor in the universe. By accepting its transmutation it both realizes its own destiny and survives in the result.
We might reach the same conclusion briefly, perhaps, by considering the collision of ends. In the Whole every idea must be realized; but, on the other hand, the conflict of ends is such that to combine them mechanically is quite impossible. It will follow then that, in their attainment, their characters must be transmuted. We may say at once that none of them, and yet that each of them, is good. And among these ends must be included what we rightly condemn as Evil (Chapter xvii.). That positive object which is followed in opposition to the good, will unite with, and will conduce to, the ultimate goal. And the conduct which seems merely bad, which appears to pursue no positive content and to exhibit no system, will in the same way become good. Both by its assertion and its negation it will subserve an over-ruling end. Good and evil reproduce that main result which we found in our examination of truth and error. The opposition in the end is unreal, but it is, for all that, emphatically actual and valid. Error and evil are facts, and most assuredly there are degrees of each; and whether anything is better or worse, does without any doubt make a difference to the Absolute. And certainly the better anything is, the less totally in the end is its being over-ruled. But nothing, however good, can in the end be real precisely as it appears. Evil and good, in short, are not ultimate; they are relative factors which cannot retain their special characters in the Whole. And we may perhaps now venture to consider this position established.
But, bearing in mind the unsatisfactory state of current thought on these topics, I think it well to follow the enquiry into further detail. There is a more refined sense in which we have not yet dealt with goodness.[16] The good, we may be informed, is morality, and morality is inward. It does not consist in the attainment of a mere result, either outside the self or even within it. For a result must depend on, and be conditioned by, what is naturally given, and for natural defects or advantages a man is not responsible. And therefore, so far as regards true morality, any realized product is chance; for it must be infected and modified, less or more, by non-moral conditions. It is, in short, only that which comes out of the man himself which can justify or condemn him, and his disposition and circumstances do not come from himself. Morality is the identification of the individual’s will with his own idea of perfection. The moral man is the man who tries to do the best which he knows. If the best he knows is not the best, that is, speaking morally, beside the question. If he fails to accomplish it, and ends in an attempt, that is once more morally irrelevant. And hence (we may add) it will be hard to find a proper sense in which different epochs can be morally compared, or in which the morality of one time or person stands above that of others. For the intensity of a volitional identification with whatever seems best appears to contain and to exhaust the strict essence of goodness. On this alone are based moral responsibility and desert, and on this, perhaps, we are enabled to build our one hope of immortality.
This is a view towards which morality seems driven irresistibly. That a man is to be judged solely by his inner will seems in the end undeniable. And, if such a doctrine contradicts itself and is inconsistent with the very notion of goodness, that will be another indication that the good is but appearance. We may even say that the present view takes a pride in its own discrepancies. It might, we must allow, contradict itself more openly. For it might make morality consist in the direct denial of that very element of existence, without which it actually is nothing.[17] But the same inconsistency, if more veiled, is still inherent in our doctrine. For a will, after all, must do something and must be characterized by what it does; while, on the other hand, this very character of what it does must depend on that which is “given” to it. And we shall have to choose between two fatal results; for either it will not matter what one does, or else something beyond and beside the bare “will” must be admitted to be good.
I will begin by saying a few words on what is called “moral desert.” If this phrase implies that for either good or bad there is any reward beyond themselves, it is at once inconsistent. For, if between virtue and happiness there is an essential connection, then virtue must be re-defined so as to take in all its essence. But if, on the other hand, the connection is but external, then in what proper sense are we to call it moral? We must either give up or alter the idea of desert, or else must seriously modify our extreme conception of moral goodness. And with this I will proceed to show how in its working that conception breaks down.
It is, first, in flat contradiction with ordinary morality. I am not referring to the fact that in common life we approve of all human qualities which to us seem desirable. Beauty, riches, strength, health and fortune—everything, and, perhaps, more than everything, which could be called a human excellence—we find admirable and approve of. But such approbations, together with their counterpart disapprovals, we should probably find ourselves unwilling to justify morally. And, passing this point by for the present, let us attend solely to those excellencies which would by all be called moral. These, the common virtues of life by which individuals are estimated, obviously depend to a large extent on disposition and bringing up. And to discard them utterly, because, or in so far as, you cannot attribute them to the individual’s will, is a violent paradox. Even if that is correct, it is at least opposed to every-day morality.
And this doctrine, when we examine it further, is found to end in nothing. Its idea is to credit a man merely with what comes out of his will, and that in fine is not anything. For in the result from the will there is no material which is not derived from a “natural” source; and the whole result, whether in its origin, its actual happening, or its end, is throughout conditioned and qualified by “natural” factors. The moral man is allowed not to be omnipotent or omniscient. He is morally perfect, if only he will but do what he knows. But how can he do it when weakness and disease, either bodily or mental, opposes his effort? And how can he even make the effort, except on the strength of some “natural” gift? Such an idea is psychologically absurd. And, if we take two different individuals, one dowered with advantages external and inward, and the other loaded with corresponding drawbacks, and if, in judging these, we refuse to make the very smallest allowance—in what have we ended? But to make an allowance would be to give up the essence of our doctrine, for the moral man no longer would be barely the man who wills what he knows. The result then is that we are unable to judge morally at all, for, otherwise, we shall be crediting morality with a foreign gift or allowance. Nor, again, do we find a less difficulty, when we turn to consider moral knowledge. For one man by education or nature will know better than another, and certainly no one can possibly know always the best.[18] But, once more, we cannot allow for this, and must insist that it is morally irrelevant. In short, it matters nothing what any one knows, and we have just seen that it matters as little what any one does. The distinction between evil and good has in fact disappeared. And to fall back on the intensity of the moral struggle will not help us.[19] For that intensity is determined, in the first place, by natural conditions, and, in the next place, goodness would be taken to consist in a struggle with itself. To make a man better you would in some cases have to add to his badness, in order to increase the division and the morality within him. Goodness, in short, meant at the beginning that one does what one can, and it has come now to mean merely that one does what one does. Or rather, whatever one does and whatever one wills, it is all alike infected by nature and morally indifferent. There is, in plain words, no difference left between goodness and badness.
But such a conclusion, we may possibly yet be told, is quite mistaken. For, though all the matter of goodness must be drawn from outside, yet the self, or the will, has a power of appropriation. By its formal act it works up and transforms that given matter, and it so makes its own, and makes moral, the crude natural stuff. Still, on the other side, we must insist that every act is a resultant from psychical conditions.[20] A formal act which is not determined by its matter, is nonsense, whether you consider that act in its origin or in its outcome. And, again, if the act is not morally characterized and judged by its matter, will there in the end be a difference between the good and the bad? Whether you look at its psychical genesis or at its essential character, the act, if it is to be possible, cannot be merely formal, and it will therefore vitally depend on that which has been called non-moral.
A form independent of matter is certainly nothing, and, as certainly therefore, it cannot be morality. It can at most be offered as such, and asserted to be so, by a chance content which fills it and professes to be moral. Morality has degenerated into self-approbation which only is formal, and which therefore is false. It has become the hollow conscience for which acts are good because they happen to be its own, or merely because somehow it happens to like them. Between the assertion and the fact there is here no genuine connection. It is empty self-will and self-assurance, which, swollen with private sentiment or chance desire, wears the mask of goodness. And hence that which professes itself moral would be the same as mere badness, if it did not differ, even for the worse, by the addition of hypocrisy.[21] For the bad, which admits not only that others but that itself is not good, has, in principle at least, condemned vain self-sufficiency and self-will. The common confession that the self in itself is worthless, has opened that self to receive worth from a good which transcends it. Morality has been driven to allow that goodness and badness do not wholly depend on ourselves, and, with this admission, it has now finally passed beyond itself. We must at last have come to the end, when it has been proclaimed a moral duty to be non-moral.
That it is a moral duty not to be moral wears the form of a paradox, but it is the expression of a principle which has been active and has shown itself throughout. Every separate aspect of the universe, if you insist on it, goes on to demand something higher than itself. And, like every other appearance, goodness implies that which, when carried out, must absorb it. Yet goodness cannot go back; for to identify itself, once more, with the earlier stage of its development would be, once more, to be driven forward to the point we have reached. The problem can be solved only when the various stages and appearances of morality are all included and subordinated in a higher form of being. In other words the end, sought for by morality, is above it and is super-moral. Let us gain a general view of the moral demands which call for satisfaction.
The first of these is the suppression of the divorce between morality and goodness. We have seen that every kind of human excellence, beauty, strength, and even luck, are all undeniably good. It is idle pretence if we assert that such gifts are not desired, and are not also approved of. And it is a moral instinct after all for which beauty counts as virtue. For, if we attempt to deny this and to confine virtue to what is commonly called moral conduct, our position is untenable. We are at once hurried forward by our admitted principle into further denials, and virtue recedes from the world until it ceases to be virtue. It seeks an inward centre not vitiated by any connection with the external, or, in other words, as we have seen, it pursues the unmeaning. For the excellence which barely is inner is nothing at all. We must either allow then that physical excellences are good, or we must be content to find virtue not realized anywhere.[22] Hence there will be virtues more or less outward, and less or more inward and spiritual. We must admit kinds and degrees and different levels of virtue. And morality must be distinguished as a special form of the general goodness. It will be now one excellence among others, neither including them all, nor yet capable of a divorced and independent existence. Morality has proved unreal unless it stands on, and vitally consists in, gifts naturally good. And thus we have been forced to acknowledge that morality is a gift; since, if the goodness of the physical virtues is denied, there is left, at last, no goodness at all. Morality, in short, finds it essential that every excellence should be good, and it is destroyed by a division between its own world and that of goodness.
It is a moral demand then that every human excellence should genuinely be good, while at the same time a high rank should be reserved for the inner life. And it is a moral demand also that the good should be victorious throughout. The defects and the contradiction in every self must be removed, and must be succeeded by perfect harmony. And, of course, all evil must be overruled and so turned into goodness. But the demand of morality has also a different side. For, if goodness as such is to remain, the contradiction cannot quite cease, since a discord, we saw, was essential to goodness. Thus, if there is to be morality, there cannot altogether be an end of evil. And, so again, the two aspects of self-assertion and of self-sacrifice will remain. They must be subordinated, and yet they must not have entirely lost their distinctive characters. Morality in brief calls for an unattainable unity of its aspects, and, in its search for this, it naturally is led beyond itself into a higher form of goodness. It ends in what we may call religion.[23] In this higher mode of consciousness I am not suggesting that a full solution is found. For religion is practical, and therefore still is dominated by the idea of the Good; and in the essence of this idea is contained an unsolved contradiction. Religion is still forced to maintain unreduced aspects, which, as such, cannot be united; and it exists in short by a kind of perpetual oscillation and compromise. Let us however see the manner in which it rises above bare morality.
For religion all is the perfect expression of a supreme will,[24] and all things therefore are good. Everything imperfect and evil, the conscious bad will itself, is taken up into and subserves this absolute end. Both goodness and badness are therefore good, just as in the end falsehood and truth were each found to be true. They are good alike, but on the other hand they are not good equally. That which is evil is transmuted and, as such, is destroyed, while the good in various degrees can still preserve its own character. Goodness, like truth, we saw was supplemented rather than wholly overruled. And, in measuring degrees of goodness, we must bear in mind the double aspect of appearance, and the ultimate identity of intenseness and extent. But in religion, further, the finite self does attain its perfection, and the separation of these two aspects is superseded and overcome. The finite self is perfect, not merely when it is viewed as an essential organ of the perfect Whole, but it also realizes for itself and is aware of perfection. The belief that its evil is overruled and its good supplemented, the identity in knowledge and in desire with the one overmastering perfection, this for the finite being is self-consciousness of itself as perfect. And in the others it finds once more the same perfection realized. For where a whole is complete in finite beings, which know themselves to be elements and members of its system, this is the consciousness in such individuals of their own completeness. Their perfection is a gift without doubt, but there is no reality outside the giver, and the separate receiver of the gift is but a false appearance.
But, on the other hand, religion must not pass wholly beyond goodness, and it therefore still maintains the opposition required for practice. Only by doing one’s best, only by the union of one’s will with the Good, can one attain to perfection. In so far as this union is absent, the evil remains; and to remain evil is to be overruled, and, as such, to perish utterly. Hence the ideal perfection of the self serves to increase its hostility towards its own imperfection and evil. The self at once struggles to be perfect, and knows at the same time that its consummation is already worked out. The moral relation survives as a subordinate but an effective aspect.
The moral duty not to be moral is, in short, the duty to be religious. Every human excellence for religion is good, since it is a manifestation of the reality of the supreme Will. Only evil, as such, is not good, since in its evil character it is absorbed; and in that character it really is, we may say, something else. Evil assuredly contributes to the good of the whole, but it contributes something which in that whole is quite transformed from its own nature. And while in badness itself there are, in one sense, no degrees, there are, in another sense, certainly degrees in that which is bad. In the same way religion preserves intact degrees and differences in goodness. Every individual, in so far as he is good, is perfect. But he is better, first in proportion to his contribution to existing excellence, and he is better, again, according as more intensely he identifies his will with all-perfecting goodness.
I have set out, baldly and in defective outline, the claim of religion to have removed contradiction from the Good. And we must consider now to what extent such a claim can be justified. Religion seems to have included and reduced to harmony every aspect of life. It appears to be a whole which has embraced, and which pervades, every detail. But in the end we are forced to admit that the contradiction remains. For, if the whole is still good, it is not harmonious; and, if it has gone beyond goodness, it has carried us also beyond religion. The whole is at once actually to be good, and, at the same time, is actually to make itself good. Neither its perfect goodness, nor yet its struggle, may be degraded to an appearance. But, on the other hand, to unite these two aspects consistently is impossible. And, even if the object of religion is taken to be imperfect and finite, the contradiction will remain. For if the end desired by devotion were thoroughly accomplished, the need for devotion and, therefore, its reality would have ceased. In short, a self other than the object must, and must not, survive, a vital discrepancy to be found again in intense sexual love. Every form of the good is impelled from within to pass beyond its own essence. It is an appearance, the stability of which is maintained by oscillation, and the acceptance of which depends largely on compromise.
The central point of religion lies in what is called faith. The whole and the individual are perfect and good for faith only. Now faith is not mere holding a general truth, which in detail is not verified; for that attitude, of course, also belongs to theory. Faith is practical, and it is, in short, a making believe; but, because it is practical, it is at the same time a making, none the less, as if one did not believe. Its maxim is, Be sure that opposition to the good is overcome, and nevertheless act as if it were there; or, Because it is not really there, have more courage to attack it. And such a maxim, most assuredly, is not consistent with itself; for either of its sides, if taken too seriously, is fatal to the other side. This inner discrepancy however pervades the whole field of religion. We are tempted to exemplify it, once again, by the sexual passion. A man may believe in his mistress, may feel that without that faith he could not live, and may find it natural, at the same time, unceasingly to watch her. Or, again, when he does not believe in her or perhaps even in himself, then he may desire all the more to utter, and to listen to, repeated professions. The same form of self-deception plays its part in the ceremonies of religion.
This criticism might naturally be pursued into indefinite detail, but it is sufficient for us here to have established the main principle. The religious consciousness rests on the felt unity of unreduced opposites; and either to combine these consistently, or upon the other hand to transform them is impossible for religion. And hence self-contradiction in theory, and oscillation in sentiment, is inseparable from its essence. Its dogmas must end in one-sided error, or else in senseless compromise. And, even in its practice, it is beset with two imminent dangers, and it has without clear vision to balance itself between rival abysses. Religion may dwell too intently on the discord in the world or in the self. In the former case it foregoes its perfection and peace, while, at the same time, it may none the less forget the difference between its private will and the Good. And, on the other side, if it emphasizes this latter difference, it is then threatened with a lapse into bare morality. But again if, flying from the discord, religion keeps its thought fixed on harmony, it tends to suffer once more. For, finding that all is already good both in the self and in the world, it may cease to be moral at all, and becomes at once, therefore, irreligious. The truth that devotion even to a finite object may lift us above moral laws, seduces religion into false and immoral perversions. Because, for it, all reality is, in one sense, good alike, every action may become completely indifferent. It idly dreams its life away in the quiet world of divine inanity, or, forced into action by chance desire, it may hallow every practice, however corrupt, by its empty spirit of devotion. And here we find reproduced in a direr form the monstrous births of moral hypocrisy. But we need not enter into the pathology of the religious consciousness. The man who has passed, however little, behind the scenes of the religious life, must have had his moments of revolt. He must have been forced to doubt if the bloody source of so many open crimes, the parent of such inward pollution can possibly be good.
But if religion is, as we have seen, a necessity, such a doubt may be dismissed. There would be in the end, perhaps, no sense in the enquiry if religion has, on the whole, done more harm than good. My object has been to point out that, like morality, religion is not ultimate. It is a mere appearance, and is therefore inconsistent with itself. And it is hence liable on every side to shift beyond its own limits. But when religion, balancing itself between extremes, has lost its balance on either hand, it becomes irreligious. If it was a moral duty to find more than morality in religion, it is, even more emphatically, a religious duty still to be moral. But each of these is a mode and an expression at a different stage of the good; and the good, as we have found, is a self-contradictory appearance of the Absolute.
It may be instructive to bring out the same inconsistency from another point of view. Religion naturally implies a relation between Man and God. Now a relation always (we have seen throughout) is self-contradictory. It implies always two terms which are finite and which claim independence. On the other hand a relation is unmeaning, unless both itself and the relateds are the adjectives of a whole. And to find a solution of this discrepancy would be to pass entirely beyond the relational point of view. This general conclusion may at once be verified in the sphere of religion.
Man is on the one hand a finite subject, who is over against God, and merely “standing in relation.” And yet, upon the other hand, apart from God man is merely an abstraction. And religion perceives this truth, and it affirms that man is good and real only through grace, or that again, attempting to be independent, he perishes through wrath. He does not merely “stand in relation,” but is moved inly by his opposite, and indeed, apart from that inward working, could not stand at all. God again is a finite object, standing above and apart from man, and is something independent of all relation to his will and intelligence. Hence God, if taken as a thinking and feeling being, has a private personality. But, sundered from those relations which qualify him, God is inconsistent emptiness; and, qualified by his relation to an Other, he is distracted finitude. God is therefore taken, again, as transcending this external relation. He wills and knows himself, and he finds his reality and self-consciousness, in union with man. Religion is therefore a process with inseparable factors, each appearing on either side. It is the unity of man and God, which, in various stages and forms, wills and knows itself throughout. It parts itself into opposite terms with a relation between them; but in the same breath it denies this provisional sundering, and it asserts and feels in either term the inward presence of the other. And so religion consists in a practical oscillation, and expresses itself only by the means of theoretical compromise. It would shrink perhaps from the statement that God loves and enjoys himself in human emotion, and it would recoil once more from the assertion that love can be where God is not, and, striving to hug both shores at once, it wavers bewildered. And sin is the hostility of a rebel against a wrathful Ruler. And yet this whole relation too must feel and hate itself in the sinner’s heart, while the Ruler also is torn and troubled by conflicting emotions. But to say that sin is a necessary element in the Divine self-consciousness—an element, however, emerging but to be forthwith absorbed, and never liberated as such—this would probably appear to be either nonsense or blasphemy. Religion prefers to put forth statements which it feels are untenable, and to correct them at once by counter-statements which it finds are no better. It is then driven forwards and back between both, like a dog which seeks to follow two masters. A discrepancy worth our notice is the position of God in the universe. We may say that in religion God tends always to pass beyond himself. He is necessarily led to end in the Absolute, which for religion is not God. God, whether a “person” or not, is, on the one hand, a finite being and an object to man. On the other hand, the consummation, sought by the religious consciousness, is the perfect unity of these terms. And, if so, nothing would in the end fall outside God. But to take God as the ceaseless oscillation and changing movement of the process, is out of the question. On the other side the harmony of all these discords demands, as we have shown, the alteration of their finite character. The unity implies a complete suppression of the relation, as such; but, with that suppression, religion and the good have altogether, as such, disappeared. If you identify the Absolute with God, that is not the God of religion. If again you separate them, God becomes a finite factor in the Whole. And the effort of religion is to put an end to, and break down, this relation—a relation which, none the less, it essentially presupposes. Hence, short of the Absolute, God cannot rest, and, having reached that goal, he is lost and religion with him. It is this difficulty which appears in the problem of the religious self-consciousness. God must certainly be conscious of himself in religion, but such self-consciousness is most imperfect.[25] For if the external relation between God and man were entirely absorbed, the separation of subject and object would, as such, have gone with it. But if again the self, which is conscious, still contains in its essence a relation between two unreduced terms, where is the unity of its self-ness? In short, God, as the highest expression of the realized good, shows the contradiction which we found to be inherent in that principle. The falling apart of idea and existence is at once essential to goodness and negated by Reality. And the process, which moves within Reality, is not Reality itself. We may say that God is not God, till he has become all in all, and that a God which is all in all is not the God of religion. God is but an aspect, and that must mean but an appearance, of the Absolute.
Through the remainder of this chapter I will try to remove some misunderstandings. The first I have to notice is the old confusion as to matter of fact; and I will here partly repeat the conclusions of our foregoing chapters. If religion is appearance, then the self and God, I shall be told, are illusions, since they will not be facts. This is the prejudice which everywhere Common Sense opposes to philosophy. Common Sense is persuaded that the first rude way, in which it interprets phenomena, is ultimate truth; and neither reasoning, nor the ceaseless protests of its own daily experience, can shake its assurance. But we have seen that this persuasion rests on barbarous error. Certainly a man knows and experiences everywhere the ultimate Reality, and indeed is able to know and experience nothing else. But to know it or experience it, fully and as such, is a thing utterly impossible. For the whole of finite being and knowledge consists vitally in appearance, in the alienation of the two aspects of existence and content. So that, if facts are to be ultimate and real, there are no facts anywhere or at all. There will be one single fact, which is the Absolute. But if, on the other hand, facts are to stand for actual finite events, or for things the essence of which is to be confined to a here or a now—facts are then the lowest, and the most untrue, form of appearance. And in the commonest business of our lives we rise above this low level. Hence it is facts themselves which, in this sense, should be called illusory.
In the religious consciousness, especially, we are not concerned with such facts as these. Its facts, if pure inward experiences, are surcharged with a content which is obviously incapable of confinement within a here or a now. And, in the seeming concentration within one moment of all Hell or all Heaven, the incompatibility of our “fact” with its own existence is forced on our view. The same truth holds of all external religious events. These are not religious until they have a significance which transcends their sensible finitude. And the general question is not whether the relation of God to man is an appearance, since there is no relation, nor any fact, which can possibly be more. The question is, where in the world of appearance is such a fact to be ranked. What, in other words, is the degree of its reality and truth?
To enter fully into such an enquiry is impossible here. If however we apply the criterion gained in the preceding chapter, we can see at once that there is nothing more real than what comes in religion. To compare facts such as these with what is given to us in outward existence, would be to trifle with the subject. The man, who demands a reality more solid than that of the religious consciousness, seeks he does not know what. Dissatisfied with the reality of man and God as he finds them there in experience, he may be invited to state intelligibly what in the end would content him. For God and man, as two sensible existences, would be degraded past recognition. We may say that the God which could exist, would most assuredly be no God. And man and God as two realities, individual and ultimate, “standing” one cannot tell where, and with a relation “between” them—this conjunction, we have seen, is self-contradictory, and is therefore appearance. It is a confused attempt to seize and hold in religion that Absolute, which, if it really were attained, would destroy religion.[26] And this attempt, by its own inconsistency, and its own failure and unrest, reveals to us once more that religion is not final and ultimate.
But, if so, what, I may be asked, is the result in practice? That, I reply at once, is not my business; and insistence on such a question would rest on a hurtful prejudice. The task of the metaphysician is to enquire into ultimate truth, and he cannot be called on to consider anything else, however important it may be. We have but little notion in England of freedom either in art or in science. Irrelevant appeals to practical results are allowed to make themselves heard. And in certain regions of art and science this sin brings its own punishment; for we fail through timidity and through a want of singleness and sincerity. That a man should treat of God and religion in order merely to understand them, and apart from the influence of some other consideration and inducement, is to many of us in part unintelligible, and in part also shocking. And hence English thought on these subjects, where it has not studied in a foreign school, is theoretically worthless. On my own mind the effect of this prejudice is personally deterrent. If to show theoretical interest in morality and religion is taken as the setting oneself up as a teacher or preacher, I would rather leave these subjects to whoever feels that such a character suits him. And, if I have touched on them here, it was because I could not help it.
And, having said so much, perhaps it would be better if I said no more. But with regard to the practical question, since I refuse altogether to answer it, I may perhaps safely try to point out what this question is. It is clear that religion must have some doctrine, however little that may be, and it is clear again that such doctrine will not be ultimate truth. And by many it is apparently denied that anything less can suffice. If however we consider the sciences we find them too in a similar position. For their first principles, as we have seen, are in the end self-contradictory. Their principles are but partially true, and yet are valid, because they will work. And why then, we may ask, are such working ideas not enough for religion? There are several serious difficulties, but the main difficulty appears to be this. In the sciences we know, for the most part, the end which we aim at; and, knowing this end, we are able to test and to measure the means. But in religion it is precisely the chief end upon which we are not clear. And, on the basis of this confused disagreement, a rational discussion is not possible. We want to get some idea as to the doctrines really requisite for religion; and we begin without having examined the end for which the doctrines are required, and by which obviously, therefore, they must be judged. From time to time this or that man finds that a certain belief, or set of beliefs, seems to lie next his heart. And on this at once he cries aloud that, if these particular doctrines are not true, all religion is at an end. And this is what the public admires, and what it calls a defence of religion.
But if the problem is to be, I do not say solved, but discussed rationally at all, we must begin by an enquiry into the essence and end of religion. And to that enquiry, I presume, there are two things indispensable. We must get some consistent view as to the general nature of reality, goodness, and truth, and we must not shut our eyes to the historical facts of religion. We must come, first, to some conclusion about the purpose of religious truths. Do they exist for the sake of understanding, or do they subserve and are ancillary to some other object? And, if the latter is true, what precisely is this end and object, which we have to use as their criterion? If we can settle this point we can then decide that religious truths, which go beyond and which fall short of their end, possess no title to existence. If, in the second place again, we are not clear about the nature of scientific truth, can we rationally deal with any alleged collision between religion and science? We shall, in fact, be unable to say whether there is any collision or none; or again, supposing a conflict to exist, we shall be entirely at a loss how to estimate its importance. And our result so far is this. If English theologians decline to be in earnest with metaphysics, they must obviously speak on some topics, I will not say ignorantly, but at least without having made a serious attempt to gain knowledge. But to be in earnest with metaphysics is not the affair of perhaps one or two years; nor did any one ever do anything with such a subject without giving himself up to it. And, lastly, I will explain what I mean by attention to history. If religion is a practical matter, it would be absurd wholly to disregard the force of continuous occupancy and possession. But history, on the other hand, supplies teachings of a different order. If, in the past and the present, we find religion appearing to flourish in the absence of certain particular doctrines, it is not a light step to proclaim these doctrines as essential to religion. And to do this without discussion and dogmatically, and to begin one’s work by some bald assumption, perhaps about the necessity of a “personal” God, is to trifle indecently with a subject which deserves some respect.
What is necessary, in short, is to begin by looking at the question disinterestedly and looking at it all round. In this way we might certainly expect to arrive at a rational discussion, but I do not feel any right to assume that we should ever arrive at more. Perhaps the separation of the accidental from the essential in religion can be accomplished only by a longer and a ruder process. It must be left, perhaps, to the blind competition of rival errors, and to the coarse struggle for existence between hostile sects. But such a conclusion, once more, should not be accepted without a serious trial. And this is all that I intend to say on the practical problem of religion.
I will end this chapter with a word of warning against a dangerous mistake. We have seen that religion is but appearance, and that it cannot be ultimate. And from this it may be concluded, perhaps, that the completion of religion is philosophy, and that in metaphysics we reach the goal in which it finds its consummation. Now, if religion essentially were knowledge, this conclusion would hold. And, so far as religion involves knowledge, we are again bound to accept it. Obviously the business of metaphysics is to deal with ultimate truth, and in this respect, obviously, it must be allowed to stand higher than religion. But, on the other side, we have found that the essence of religion is not knowledge. And this certainly does not mean that its essence consists barely in feeling. Religion is rather the attempt to express the complete reality of goodness through every aspect of our being. And, so far as this goes, it is at once something more, and therefore something higher, than philosophy.
Philosophy, as we shall find in our next chapter, is itself but appearance. It is but one appearance among others, and, if it rises higher in one respect, in other ways it certainly stands lower. And its weakness lies, of course, in the fact that it is barely theoretical. Philosophy may be made more undoubtedly, and incidentally it is more; but its essence clearly must be confined to intellectual activity. It is therefore but a one-sided and inconsistent appearance of the Absolute. And, so far as philosophy is religious, to that extent we must allow that it has passed into religion, and has ceased, as such, any longer to be philosophy. I do not suggest to those who, dissatisfied with religious beliefs, may have turned seriously to metaphysics, that they will not find there what they seek. But they will not find it there, or anywhere else, unless they have brought it with them. Metaphysics has no special connection with genuine religion, and neither of these two appearances can be regarded as the perfection of the other. The completion of each is not to be found except in the Absolute.
Footnote
- ↑ My Ethical Studies, 1876, a book which in the main still expresses my opinions, contains a further discussion on many points. For my views on the nature of pleasure, desire, and volition, I must refer to Mind, No. 49. My former volume would have been reprinted, had I not desired to rewrite it. But I feel that the appearance of other books, as well as the decay of those superstitions against which largely it was directed, has left me free to consult my own pleasure in this matter.
- ↑ In the main, what is true is good, because the good has to satisfy desire, and, on the whole, we necessarily desire to find the more perfect. What is good is true, in the main, because the idea desired, being, in general, more perfect, is more real. But on the relation of these aspects further see the next chapter.
- ↑ I must refer here to Mind, No. 49.
- ↑ The object of any idea has a tendency to become desired, if held over against fact, although, beforehand and otherwise, it has not been, and is not pleasant. Every idea, as the enlargement of self, is, in the abstract and so far, pleasant. And the pleasantness of an idea, as my psychical state, can be transferred to its object. We have to ask always what it is that fixes an idea against fact. Is it there because its object has been pleasant, or because it, or its object, is now pleasant? And can we not say sometimes that it is pleasant only because it is there? The discussion of these matters would lead to psychological subtleties, which here we may neglect.
- ↑ I have noticed above (p. 374) the want of thoroughness displayed by Hedonism in its attitude towards the intellect. See more below, p. 434. For further criticism of details I may refer to my Ethical Studies, and again to a pamphlet that was called Mr. Sidgwick’s Hedonism. Cp. Mind, 49, p. 36.
- ↑ I may add that in time it precedes the development of will. Will and thought, proper, imply the distinction of subject from object, and pain and pleasure seem prior to this distinction, and indeed largely to effect it. I may emphasize my dissent from certain views as to the dependence of pleasure on the Will, or the Self, or the Ego, by stating that I consider these to be products and subsequent to pleasure. To say that they are made solely by pleasure and pain would be incorrect. But it would be much more correct than to take the latter always as being a reaction from them.
- ↑ For the sake of convenience I assume that approval implies desire, but in certain cases the assumption would hardly be correct (p. 404). But approval always must imply that the idea is pleasant. Apart from, or in abstraction from, that feature, we should have mere recognition. And, though recognition tends always to become approval, yet in idea they are not the same; and again in fact recognition, I think, is possible where approval is absent.
We approve, of course, not always absolutely, but from some one point of view. Even where the result is most unwelcome we may still approve theoretically; and to find what we are looking for, however bad, is an intellectual success, and may, so far, be approved of. It will then be good, so far as it is regarded solely from this one aspect. The real objection against making approval co-extensive with goodness is that approval implies usually a certain degree of reflection, and suggests the judging from an abstracted and impersonal point of view. In this way approbation may be found, for instance, to be, so far, incompatible with love, and so also with some goodness. But if approbation is taken at a low level of development, and is used to mean no more than the finding anything to be that which gives satisfaction, the objection disappears. The relation of practical to theoretical approval will be touched on further in Chapter xxvi. Approval, of course, is practical where the idea is of something to be done.
- ↑ If pleasure were the only thing that could be desired, it would, hence, not follow straight from this that pleasure is desirable at all, or that, further, it is the sole desirable. These conclusions might follow, but in any case not directly; and the intermediate steps should be set out and discussed. The word “desirable” naturally lends itself to misuse, and has on this account been of service to some Hedonistic writers. It veils a covert transition from “is” to “is to be.”
- ↑ In estimating pains and pleasures we consider not merely their degree and extent, but also their effects, and generally all those qualities with which they are inseparably connected.
- ↑ This applies emphatically to any specific feeling of goodness or morality.
- ↑ See Ethical Studies, pp. 200-203. And compare here below, p. 431, and p. 529.
- ↑ I am, for the present purpose, taking no account of immorality or of the self-sacrifice which seems failure.
- ↑ It may be as well perhaps to add that, neither in this sense nor in any other, can the good be defined negatively. At that point, in any definition, where a negative term is introduced, the reader should specially look for a defect.
- ↑ The same conclusion holds if for “advantage” one writes “pleasure.” For pleasure is necessarily connected with other content, and is not isolated, or again conjoined hap-hazard and accidentally. One may of course pursue “merely one’s own” pleasure, in the sense that one tries to aim at and to consider this partial end by itself. But, if you assert that this end has not another aspect which contradicts “merely one’s own,” the assertion is false. And it is, I presume, a moral platitude that selfish action always must concern more than the actor.
- ↑ The same difficulty will appear if an attempt is made to state the general maxim. Both ends are to remain and to be ultimate, and hence neither is to be qualified by the other or the whole, for to be so qualified is to be transcended. I may add that a negative form of statement, here as everywhere, serves no purpose but to obscure the problem. This is, however, a reason why it may be instinctively selected.
- ↑ This view of morality is of course a late development, but I do not propose to say anything on its origin. With regard to the origin of morality, in general, I will only say this, that one may lay too much stress on its directly social aspect. Certainly to isolate the individual is quite indefensible. But, upon the other hand, it is wrong to make the sole root of morality consist in the direct identification of the individual with the social will. Morality, as we have remarked, is not confined to that in its end; and in the same way, we must add, it is not merely that in its beginning. I am referring here to the facts of self-esteem and self-disapprobation, or the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of a creature with itself. This feeling must begin when that creature is able to form an idea of itself, as doing or enjoying something desired, and can bring that idea into relation with its own actual success or failure. The dissatisfied brooding of an animal that has, for example, missed its prey, is, we may be sure, not yet moral. But it will none the less contain in rudiment that judgment of one’s self which is a most important factor of morality. And this feeling attaches itself indifferently to the idea of every sort of action or performance, success in which is desired. If I feel or consider myself to correspond with such an idea, I am at once pleased with myself; and, even if it is only for luck at cards, I approve of and esteem myself. For approbation, as we saw, is not all moral; nor is it, even in its origin, all directly social. But this subject deserves treatment at a length which here is impossible.
- ↑ Ethical Studies, Essay IV.
- ↑ On the common Hedonistic view we may say that he never can hope to do this, or know when he has done it. What it would call “objective rightness” seems in the end to be not ascertainable humanly, or else to be the opinion of the subject, however wrong that may be. But an intelligent view of the connection between goodness and truth is not a thing which we need expect from common Hedonism (p. 407).
- ↑ Cp. Ethical Studies, pp. 213-217.
- ↑ This would be denied by what is vulgarly called Free Will. That attempts to make the self or will, in abstraction from concrete conditions, the responsible source of conduct. As however, taken in that abstraction, the self or will is nothing, “Free Will” can merely mean chance. If it is not that, its advocates are at least incapable of saying what else it is; and how chance can assist us towards being responsible, they naturally shrink from discussing (see Ethical Studies, Essay I., and Mr. Stephen’s Science of Ethics, pp. 282-3). Considered either theoretically or practically, “Free Will” is, in short, a mere lingering chimera. Certainly no writer, who respects himself, can be called on any longer to treat it seriously (p. 393).
- ↑ We may note here that our country, the chosen land of Moral Philosophy, has the reputation abroad of being the chief home of hypocrisy and cant.
- ↑ If we take such a virtue as courage, and deny its moral goodness where it is only physical, we shall be forced in the end to deny its goodness everywhere. We may see, again, how there may be virtues which, in a sense, rise above mere goodness. This from the view of morality proper is of course impossible.
- ↑ The origin of religion is a question which does not concern us here. Religion appears to have two roots, fear and admiration or approval. The latter need not be taken as having a high or moral sense. Wonder or curiosity seems not to be religious, unless it is in the service of these other feelings. And, of the two main roots of religion, one will be more active at one time and place, and the other at another. The feelings also will attach themselves naturally to a variety of objects. To enquire about the origin of religion as if that origin must always be one, seems fundamentally erroneous.
It concerns us more to know what religion now means among ourselves. I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to answer this question, unless we realize that religion, in the end, has more meanings than one. Part of this variety rests no doubt on mere misunderstanding. That which is mainly intellectual, or mainly aesthetic, would probably be admitted in the end to fall outside religion. But we come at last, I should say, to a stubborn discrepancy. There are those who would call religious any kind of practical relation to the “other world,” or to the supersensible generally. The question, for instance, as to life after death, or as to the possibility of communication with what are called “spirits,” seems to some essentially religious. And they might deny that religious feeling can exist at all towards an object in “our world.” Another set of minds would insist that, in order to have religion, you must have a relation of a special and particular kind. And they would add that, where you have this relation, whether towards an object of the “other world” or not, you have got religion. The question as to life after death, or as to the possibility of spirit-rapping or witchcraft, is really not in itself in the very least religious. And it is only, they would urge, because per accidens our feelings to the unseen are generally (not always) religious, that religion has been partly narrowed and partly extended without just cause. I consider this latter party to be wholly right, and I shall disregard from this point forward the opposing view.
What then in general is religion? I take it to be a fixed feeling of fear, resignation, admiration or approval, no matter what may be the object, provided only that this feeling reaches a certain strength, and is qualified by a certain degree of reflection. But I should add, at once, that in religion fear and approval to some extent must always combine. We must in religion try to please, or at least to submit our wills to, the object which is feared. That conduct towards the object is approved of, and that approbation tends again to qualify the object. On the other side in religion approval implies devotion, and devotion seems hardly possible, unless there is some fear, if only the fear of estrangement.
But in what degree must such a feeling be present, if we are to call it religion? Can the point be fixed exactly? I think we must admit that it cannot be. But it lies generally there where we feel that our proper selves, in comparison, are quite powerless or worthless. The object, over against which we find ourselves to be of no account, tends to inspire us with religion. If there are many such objects, we are polytheists. But if, in comparison with one only, all the rest have no weight, we have arrived at monotheism.
Hence any object, in regard to which we feel a supreme fear or approval, will engage our devotion, and be for us a Deity. And this object, most emphatically, in no other sense need possess divinity. It is a common phrase in life that one may make a God of this or that person, object, or pursuit; and in such a case our attitude, it seems to me, must be called religious. This is the case often, for example, in sexual or in parental love. But to fix the exact point at which religion begins, and where it ends, would hardly be possible.
In this chapter I am taking religion only in its highest sense. I am using it for devotion to the one perfect object which is utterly good. Incomplete forms of religion, such as the devotion to a woman or to a pursuit, can exist side by side. But in this highest sense of religion there can be but one object. And again, when religion is fully developed, this object must be good. For towards anything else, although we feared it, we should now entertain feelings of revolt, of dislike, and even of contempt. There would not any longer be that moral prostration which is implied in all religion.
- ↑ As to the ultimate truth of this belief, see the following chapter.
- ↑ The two extremes in the human-divine self-consciousness cannot wholly unite in one concordant self. It is interesting to compare such expressions as—
- “I am the eye with which the Universe
Beholds itself and knows itself divine,”
- “I am the eye with which the Universe
- and
- and
- “They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings,”
- “They reckon ill who leave me out;
- and
- and
- “Die Sehnsucht du, und was sie stillt,”
- “Die Sehnsucht du, und was sie stillt,”
- with
- with
- Ne suis-je pas un faux accord
Dans la divine symphonic,
Grace à la vorace Ironie
Qui me secoue et qui me mord?
- Ne suis-je pas un faux accord
- Elle est dans ma voix, la criarde!
C’est tout mon sang, ce poison noir!
Je suis le sinistre miroir
Où la mégère se regarde!
- Elle est dans ma voix, la criarde!
- Je suis la plaie et le couteau!
Je suis le soufflet et la joue!
Je suis les membres et la roue,
Et la victime et le bourreau!
- Je suis la plaie et le couteau!
- ↑ It leads to the dilemma, If God is, I am not, and, if I am, God is not. We have not reached a true view until the opposite of this becomes self-evident. Then without hesitation we answer that God is not himself, unless I also am, and that, if God were not, I certainly should be nothing.